More than 1 million N.J. residents without power due to Hurricane Sandy

One million utility customers in New Jersey — about a quarter of the state — are without power as of 8 p.m., the result of Hurricane Sandy, according to utilities' websites.

Jersey Central Power & Light reported 512,000 customers without power, mainly along the coast, with 145,000 outages in Ocean County and 155,000 or so in Monmouth County, according to the utility's website. The largest disruptions include 24,000 customers in Brick, 35,000 in the Toms River area and 20,000 in Middletown.

Public Electric Service & Gas, which serves more inland and northern counties, had more than 398,000 outages, according to data on its website, including 83,572 in Bergen County, 66,333 in Essex County, and more than 40,000 each in in Passaic and Mercer counties.

STORM UPDATE

STATUS: Sandy was classified as a post-tropical cyclone at 7 p.m. Monday and made landfall near Atlantic City at 8 p.m. Monday

STRENGTH: Maximum sustained winds of 80 mph

SPEED & DIRECTION: Moving north-northwest at 23 mph

OUTLOOK: Forecasters continue to predict the New Jersey coast will be hit by powerful winds and a storm surge that could be life-threatening

Source: National Hurricane Center

For Atlantic City Electric, the number of outages went from 42,000 at around 3 p.m. to 129,000 at 8 p.m., according to its website.

The outages were heaviest on the Barrier Islands from Long Beach Park to North Beach Haven. About 11,000 customers were in the dark around Manahawkin, with another 10,000 or so out near the Mystic Islands.

Between Atlantic City, Margate City, Ventnor City and Longport there were more than 30,000 customers without power.

Last year, during Tropical Storm Irene, nearly 1 million customers lost power at the peak of the storm, while 1.9 million of the state's 3.9 million electric customers lost power at one time or another.